Internet Marketing Success Using Landing Pages and Conversion Optimization

A Introductory Guide and Explanation of Website Landing Pages

In order to provide an effective and successful internet marketing campaign, you need to have relevant website traffic. And if you own a website or even a domain name, you’ve been contacted by several digital marketing companies in Jacksonville and throughout the world touting their uniquely effective SEO strategies for getting web site traffic or page 1 search engine rankings. What is far more important and all-too-often forgotten, is what to do with those website visitors after you’ve acquired them. In this article we’re going to discuss fundamentals of website conversion optimization.

Website conversion optimization is the process we use to encourage your website visitors to complete a specific action. This action could be to purchase something, download a whitepaper or e-book, submit a contact form or RFP, or schedule a consultation. ALL of these actions will require the website visitor to provide their email address and some amount of contact information – which converts them into an active website lead for your company.

You could have 2 million unique visitors every month and it would be pointless for your company if they don’t convert into leads. There are a lot of companies throwing money into the Internet marketing abyss. They’re generating website traffic, but they are not generating any consistent numbers of leads or sales from that traffic. The majority of them – including your competitors – are ignoring by far the most critical component of internet marketing – conversion! This leaves the door wide open for you and your company to gain new business and expand your market share by employing the fundamentals of quality Internet marketing and website conversion optimization.

Your goal is not website traffic. It’s generating leads and sales! Without sales, you would have no business, no matter how much traffic you have paid to bring to your website. If you want to grow your business, continue reading this article and you will learn the tools and methods we use to increase website conversions for every client, every time!

What is a Website Landing Page?

A landing page is a website page that is carefully planned, designed and developed to produce a desired outcome. You employ a website landing page to promote a specific offer in exchange for the visitor’s email address and/or contact information. You may employ a website landing page to prompt website visitors to download your latest White Paper or special report. Along with their email address and other contact details, you should ask permission to be able to send additional marketing communication such as an “opt-in” to your email newsletters in the future. You can also use a landing page to promote an exclusive limited time offer for immediate purchase in your web store.

The specific action you ask website landing page visitors to take must be very specific and targeted. In the planning phase, the desired action will determine all aspects of your website landing page including the design, layout, content, headline and calls-to-action. The example on the right is a landing page example from HubSpot, an industry-leading inbound marketing agency who is providing this HubSpot website landing page example through the HubSpot Academy.

A Highly Targeted & Effective Approach

Most Internet marketers spend too much time trying to drive more search traffic to their websites, which is definitely one of the primary and critical components of Internet marketing. But it’s absolutely imperative that we not stop there – in many instances we must also think about delivering website visitors to a properly targeted, custom website landing page rather than the homepage.

Think of this scenario: You operate a website that sells vitamins as well as other nutritional supplements. You start running Pay Per Click ads that focus on specific organic vitamins for women. Your ads point back to the website homepage, and you are relying on your website architecture, calls to action, search function, and checkout process to convert your PPC visitor to a paying customer.

In reality, research has proven there’s a really good chance individuals who you paid to get to your website through that PPC ad will land on your website homepage and either get distracted or fail to track down the vitamins they intended to purchase and completely give up!

Rather than delivering that very same visitor with this PPC ad straight to your general health and nutrition website homepage, why not drive it to a clean, simple, targeted and intelligently designed website landing page which has one specific product – the one they wanted to purchase!

Based on this scenario, you can clearly see that using a highly targeted website landing page – or conversion page can help you improve your conversions from PPC campaigns. Those same principles can be integrated into your website calls-to-action, as well as placement of certain elements within the design.

Let’s Recap – Why Should We Use Landing Pages?

• Compared to your website homepage, properly designed landing pages allow you to focus your website visitor’s attention on your offer and lead them to the desired action
• Landing pages always include a highly visible lead generation form which turns your website visitor into an active lead for your organization
• By testing your landing page design, colors, heading, content, and placement of design elements you can improve conversion rates – a process known as conversion rate optimization
• Keep the content on your landing page short and to-the-point. Tell the visitor exactly what you want them to do, and let them know what they will get in return. Use attractive images that support your message and offer
• Keep your landing pages uncluttered!  That space over there isn’t perfect for another CTA or widget – it was built into the page on purpose.